


You Honor the Dead by Fighting

by Actually_Felicity_Smoak



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, Spoilers for episode 3x10, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 05:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5323142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Actually_Felicity_Smoak/pseuds/Actually_Felicity_Smoak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity examines her reasons for being on Team Arrow, and whether they apply after [spoiler]</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Honor the Dead by Fighting

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after 3x10, so it's not even pretending to fit into canon that follows. I was just trying to imagine what it would feel like to be Felicity that night.

Felicity sat in her darkened apartment, and stared at nothing.

She’d cried, of course. But you can only cry for so long before your body runs out of tears. She could fix that, easily -- a simple matter of both rehydrating and replenishing crucial electrolytes -- drinking Gatorade, basically. But the thing about crying is that -- except in cases involving making frat boys uncomfortable, crying doesn’t _do_ anything. While the physiological release it provides is necessary for long-term psychological health, it doesn’t actually solve any problems.

She’d even tried flipping over a table, the way Oliver di … had .. had used to do.  Some distant part of her had noted a vicious, animal satisfaction at the destruction, but most of her simply pointed out that _that_ didn’t solve any problems either.

 Felicity was a problem solver. She always had been. You look at the situation. You break it down into its component pieces. You look at the relationships between those pieces. Then you find possible solutions to test, or you demonstrate that no possible combination of the components would result in a solution. The process was the same whether you were counting cards, or figuring out how to pay for MIT, or hacking a government satellite. Felicity was _really_ _good_ at the process, and it always worked.

Except this time, it was simple. Oliver was dead. Death is irreversible. No possible combination of components will result in a solution. Q.E.D.

And so, as night fell, and darkness deepened around her, Felicity sat, too tired to eat, too tired to cry, too tired -- for the first time in her life -- to even think. There was nothing to think _about_. Oliver was dead.

 

\-----------------------------------------------

 

Around midnight her brain, as it always did, became argumentative. Questioning assumptions is the heart of science, and Felicity was, above all, a scientist.

 _That actually doesn’t make any sense,_ her brain pointed out. _There are still lots of things to think about. The world still exists._

 “I don’t care.” Felicity said it out loud. There was no one around to think her crazy, and it helped relieve some of her pent-up tension.

_You do care. You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it._

 “Great. I’m sitting in a darkened room quoting Harry Potter to myself. I really have lost it.”

_Well, you could turn on a light._

 Felicity snorted, and flipped off the empty room in lieu of making rude gestures at her own mind, but she stood up and turned on a light.

 _It doesn’t really change anything_ , she thought. _I’m still here. And Oliver’s still … gone. And I don’t know what to do._

_Well, there are really, fundamentally, two possibilities. Either you die, or you live.  And if you live, there are two possibilities: either you carry on Team Arrow, or you don’t._

_I suppose, one could argue that the latter of the two choices is the more fundamental, since one could reasonably classify death as a subset of the not-continuing Team Arrow possibilities…_ Felicity bit her lip as she realized she’d started babbling. Even though it was only in her head, a part of her still expected to hear Oliver’s sharp “Felicity!” But of course he hadn’t spoken… he couldn’t … he would never … a sob escaped her, and then she was crying again.

When the tears ran out this time, she got herself a glass of water, and sat on the couch. She’d thought about coffee -- she clearly wasn’t going to sleep tonight anyway, and its warmth would have been comforting -- but recognized reluctantly that she needed to rehydrate. Especially since it was _extremely_ likely that she’d be crying again, soon. _Guess I’ve decided not to die._

_Maybe I should go get some Gatorade._

 But if she was going to live, she had another choice to make: to Arrow, or not to Arrow? And to answer that, she had to figure out why she’d even been part of the team to begin with.

She’d agreed to help Walter. But then Walter had been returned home, safe, and she’d stayed on. Because. Because...

… because she felt like she was making a difference, like she’d wanted to do back in her hacktivist days…?

...because she believed in Oliver’s mission?

or because she’d believed in Oliver?

Had she done all this work, these two and a half years, because she honestly believed it was the right thing to do? Or because of the way it made her feel when that beautiful blue-eyed boy smiled at her?

  _Hell, it’s not like there’s anyone on the team who isn’t partially motivated by Oliver’s smiles_. Roy could go days without food or sleep, on just scraps of commendation. Digg was more subtle, but it was clear that nearly every decision he made was designed to make Oliver feel better -- even if it meant causing Oliver pain in the short run. Oliver was like a campfire - you couldn’t help wanting to be closer to him. When he was scared, or angry, the heat of his emotions poured out over everyone, and yes, it sometimes hurt. But oh! when he was happy, or proud, it made everyone in a ten-meter radius feel good about themselves. For all that he’d tried to be as cold as stone, Oliver’s joy had been a gift to everyone he’d shared it with. Felicity sobbed again, remembering how alive he’d made her feel.

_I’ve lost that. And it’s never coming back._

_But you honor the dead by fighting. And we are not done fighting._

 Felicity sat upright, startled by the ferocity of the thought. She’d never thought of herself as fierce. Determined, yes, certainly -- you had to be, to get enough scholarships to make MIT affordable to a cocktail waitress. But in the last few years -- the last year, really -- she’d found in herself a kind of strength and intensity that could turn that determination into a weapon. It was her words -- "You are not alone. And I believe in you" -- that had put Oliver back in the fight when he’d been ready to quit. It was her hand that had turned Slade from an indestructible monster to a mere angry man. Just last month, when she’d been kidnapped, Oliver had provided a distraction, but it was she who’d wrested control of a gun and pistol-whipped Connor into unconsciousness.

 She’d been surprised, that night, to realize how much of that determination came from her mother. But it was Oliver who’d taught her to hone it, and focus it. Her mom’s gift had been determination like lamplight: spreading everywhere, and affecting everything. Oliver’s gift was the ability to focus that light into a single, coherent beam, a laser that could destroy anything it chose.

 A weapon must be aimed with care, and responsibility. But not to use it would be to discard Oliver’s legacy, his gift to her.

 She picked up her phone, and selected a contact. Digg, bless him, answered on the second ring, though the phone’s screen displayed 3:18AM at the top.

“I’m in. On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Digg inquired

“We _destroy_ Merlyn.”

Even over the static of a lousy cell phone connection, Felicity could hear Digg grin.


End file.
